Moving horses and modernism canter across Vancouver billboard
Selections from Berlin-based artist Shannon Bool’s Horse of Oblivion series make up part of Capture Photography Festival’s 2022 Billboard Project
Shannon Bool, Horse of Oblivion 5, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery
Capture Photography Festival presents works from the Horse of Oblivion series by Shannon Bool at the billboard on Fraser Street at East 15th Avenue (across from Grey Church) until March 10, 2023 as part of the Pattison Outdoor Billboards Public Art Project.
STROLL ALONG FRASER Street near East 15th Avenue anytime between now and next March, and you will be graced by the magnificent view of a striding white horse. Look a bit closer and you’ll see what look like architectural elements and renderings inside the majestic creature’s body; take a step back, and you will realize what is in front of you: a massive billboard featuring the Horse of Oblivion 2 by artist Shannon Bool.
Curated by Capture Photography Festival, the Horse of Oblivion series is one of the projects selected for the Pattison Outdoor Billboards Public Art Project as part of the 2022 fest. Certain images from Bool’s series, along with the works of other global artists, are blown up in size and put onto billboards in different areas of Vancouver.
Shannon Bool, originally from B.C, now lives and works in Berlin. Bool’s body of work includes painting, sculpture, installation, photograms, carpets, and tapestries. Often marrying history and materials, Bool has recently gravitated in her work toward her own critique of modernism through unconventional methods and processes.
For Horse of Oblivion, images of iconic modernist buildings and infrastructures, including those designed by architects Jean Renaudie and Aldo Rossi, are layered within the bodies of elegant tramping horses via the technique of photogram. Photographic prints are created with photo collages made by transparent foils that are then placed on top of photographic paper and exposed to light. With the necessary mending of the layers, the intricacy of this process is further made visible to billboard-viewers because of the work’s large scale.
Bool’s inspiration for the series stems from her personal interest in modernist architecture. She was particularly intrigued by Italian modernism around the time of the 1920s and the legacy left by Carlo Mollino, an Italian architect and artist.
“He’s a really iconic figure,” Bool says in an interview with Stir. “He was an engineer, an architect, but also an artist and a furniture designer. He was also a pilot; he designed race cars. So he was a really vibrant figure from modernism.”
During time spent living in Italy and other parts of Europe, Bool visited many buildings and archives of architectural art that inspired her body of work, one of which was a photomontage by Mollino. In it, a white horse is seen running in front of the Equestrian Club of Turin, which he designed and was constructed from 1937 to 1940.
“When I saw this, I was really intrigued because I’ve made other works with white horses,” Bool says. “I thought, ‘Okay, he did a montage of a horse outside of the equestrian society. So I’ll invert it; I will montage the architecture into the horses.’”
Shannon Bool, Horse of Oblivion 2, 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery
The first piece of Bool’s string of works displayed as part the billboard project —Horse of Oblivion 2—is a racing horse. Layered on its body is an image of race tracks used for driving tests from Turin’s Lingotto building, once the home of the Fiat factory. Bool says she wanted to encapsulate the contrasting dynamic movements of the two subjects.
“The horse is moving, and then there’s a whole world of something else moving inside it,” Bool says. “I was interested in the parallel ideas that you have in modernism, the idea of technology, speed, and sub-humanness.”
The grasping energy in Bool’s work is further amplified when blown up into grand-scale billboards. The horse becomes almost life-sized, dynamic, and parading with pride on the streets of Vancouver. The Billboard Project allows viewers to see the piece with fresh eyes compared to if it were hanging on a gallery wall or included in a coffee-table book.
“[Viewers will] have a completely different experience because the work is about the body, space, and architecture. Generally, when a work is expanded, it connects more directly to the body and less to cognition. My feeling is that people will have a confrontation with it,” she says. “Also it’s bringing the works to a different public, which I think is great.”
Out of the Horse of Oblivion series’ original 10 variations, numbers 2, 5, and 8 will be on rotating display on the billboard across from GreyChurch through to next spring.
Yoshinori Mizutani, Tokyo Parrots 005, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and Christophe Guye Galerie, IBASHO, and IMA gallery
Also running as part of Capture Photography Festival 2022 Billboard Projects are Miranda Barnes’s works on the Arbutus Greenway and a series by Yoshinori Mizutani on the River District Billboard. (Both run to May 22, 2022.)
Barnes’s collection of images aims to capture the beauty in people’s day-to-day lives. Taken over a span of four years across the United States, the photos capture ordinary moments that spark conversation and reflect bigger issues in society. Curated by Isolde Brielmaier, Barnes’s display features images from New York and Texas. “I like to believe that my work leaves space for imagination, and highlights themes that interest me such as nostalgia of the past and dreaming about the future,” Barnes says in her artist statement for Capture Photography Festival.
Tokyo-based Mizutani specializes in vibrant landscapes and skyscapes, with camera manipulation and heightened colours. The scenes Mizutani captures are euphoric and almost surreal. Curated by Capture Photography Festival, Tokyo Parrots 005 is part of a series shot over a year that documents what Mizutani saw near his home in Tokyo’s Setagaya area: flocks of birds that gathered daily.
Miranda Barnes, Luling, Texas, 2021. Courtesy of the artist
More information is at Capture Photography Festival.
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